


You Should Get a Girlfriend, Sensei

by linkzeldi



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-07
Updated: 2016-07-07
Packaged: 2018-07-22 02:28:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7416019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linkzeldi/pseuds/linkzeldi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Haise tries to listen to the advice of his students, for once.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Should Get a Girlfriend, Sensei

“You should get a girlfriend sensei!” His students called after him.   
  
“Haha, so funny,” His dry laughter ceased as this was not the first, nor the last of several times the recipients of his lectures at the CCG academy gave such advice. He pinched his brow, nursing what was soon to blossom into a headache. He suffered frequent migraines, but few of them were caused by sheer annoyance. Good naturedly though, he knew he could not hold his students’ words against them. There was some truth to them after all.

Six months ago he wandered into a cafe by chance with his squad because he wanted to peruse the rather large collection of books he spotted from afar. Sasaki might have been an easy man to please, but it was hard to generate a wide variety of interests when you only had access to three years of memory. When he entered he breathed in every scent of the cafe’s aroma, let it fill him. Then, a woman came near him and the entire breeze of the cafe seemed to shift. He smelt on her, the lightest traces of vanilla. To him it was the first time he was ever grateful for his enhanced senses in his short lifespan. The aroma, combining with all of his other senses, the sight of her, the sound of the pause in her voice just so light when she asked for his order and seemed to stop herself from saying something, everything gave him sensory overload. He cried-long story short. For reasons he did not understand even now- six months later.

Detecting a chill in the air, Sasaki reached towards his back pockets hoping to find his mittens. Instead he pulled out a hankerchief hat he had folded neatly into his back pocket. Yes, that. On the day he cried in the cafe, in front of a beautiful stranger, she gave him this to wipe her face. For a moment he thought about his books where in fairy tales, gallant knights would take offerings like these as a token of their love. Sasaki had immediately ruined that thought though, by blowing his nose out into it loud enough to attract the attention of the whole cafe. When he tried to give it back to her, her face fell flat and she told him to keep it in a dry voice.

He liked to think he was lovably awkward at times, but that was just plain awkward. He visited the cafe periodically after that, this time alone. However after his botched first attempt, he lost all confidence in trying to start a conversation. He would meekly tell the waitress his order in as few words as possible (he did not know her name nor did he dare ask, so for now she was coffee shop waitress). Their one interaction complete, he wandered to the book shelf and window shopped. Sometimes he would be even less lucky, and the only server their would be a handsome if unshaven man much older than coffee shop waitress, from overheard conversation Sasaki dubbed him brother. Brother was quiet and blunt with him, but Sasaki never sensed any malice behind it. In fact he felt it just came from being kept at quite a distance. That was a normal way to treat a customer, even a recurring customer, so Sasaki felt a much more peaceful interaction with him. It was with him that Sasaki finally got the nerve to ask if he could borrow from their selection of books, though he had been secretly hoping to ask coffeee shop waittress.

  
He shouldn’t have made that wish in secret, because it ended up coming true. As he looked over the various titles, shuddering at the works of Takatsuki Sen, he felt a poke in his back that nearly made him jump.   
  


“Sorry,” She said softly as he turned around, rubbing the base of his spine.

“No need for apologies, after all I might just have to go sasarious, and get you back! For this.” He said with a joking smile. She tried to return it, but it was obviously forced. Sasaki knew his jokes were bad, he just thanked her mentally for the effort.

Odd, she managed to tap him just as the base of his kagune. He didn’t register it as anything besides odd at the time, and the fact that she spoke to him of her own free will took up all of his attention instead. “Those children that were following you before, were they students?”

“Hmm?” Sasaki knew exactly what she was asking, but he pretended not to, with that light conversational intonation. He wanted to delay the inevitable for as long as he could, even if that meant just seconds it would be worth it, because any seconds with her felt like a lifetime.

“You know,” Her voice dropped lower as if this were a secret between the two of them, “I was asking if you were a teacher, a literature professor maybe?” For some reason her tone sounded almost hopeful. The waitress was she- thinking of him this entire time. Sasaki was so happy he wanted to cry a second time. Of course like all happiness in his life, it was conditional and fleeting.   
  


“The children who follow me around, I serve an advisory role to them, and also I have given lectures,” He said, delaying again, because that was the only life he knew. He had to keep reminding himself, he was so lucky, so he must appreciate what he had while it lasted. “I’m not a literature professor though,” his body physically made him look away, he got a feeling in his stomach like he had wronged her in a past life or something, “I’m a CCG officer.”

“Oh,” She said simply.

The conversation died after that, or at least nothing more significant was said. It was his fault for hiding it, no it was his fault for ever pretending like this was an option. Dating a CCG officer even under normal circumstances, was an emotional burden most were unprepared for, like dating a soldier constantly off for war. Most offciers intermarried among the CCG, or just chose not to have children at all. Children! Wow, he sure was going fast for somebody who had just done the equivalent of politely rejecting of him. Sasaki hung his head and sighed into his coffee, causing it to ripple.   
  
Sasaki continued to visit the cafe. He was a selfish person after all, he realized, constantly trying to grasp these little moments of happiness from others when he could not achieve them himself. She was beautiful though, the kind of beauty that when you lingered too long, you thought dangerous things like ‘if i could tell her everything and she could just accept me, i would be saved’. Only killers think stuff like that about people they barely know, Sasaki reminded himself, and then. No wonder I keep thinking that way. His shame kept him from visiting too often though, and his visits became farther and farther spaced out. At least he wouldn’t annoy the staff that way, he thought with some small relief.

Then when he thought, he finally learned his lesson about boundaries, one conversation ruined what took him weeks to establish. He wanted to blame her, because the moment she got close it was impossible to think with reason because she occupied all of his thoughts, but it wasn’t her fault for being born so lovely. She approached him on the table and asked him simply if he wanted to borrow a jacket from the lost and found.   
  
“A jacket?” Haise repeated back innocently.

“Yes, from the lost and found,” Haise would have suspected she was making fun of him, “It’s winter outside you realize, and you’ve only come here in a suit jacket.”

  
“I couldn’t impose,” Haise said innocently, putting both hands up the moment she focused her glare on him because suddenly he felt under fire. “Somebody else might come looking for their jacket, I would feel bad.”  
  
She must have realized she was glaring, because her eyes relaxed,and she sighed. Her hands immediately went to her own body to unravel the scarf she herself was wearing. “At least won’t you take this? That way you’ll return it.” Haise just wanted to ask, if he could return her handkerchief, if he could borrow books on occasion, now he was being given a scarf one more thing to hold on to. It was too much, but he could not say no to this person any more, it took all his strength to just a moment ago, so he weakly nodded.

  
When she saw he was not going to do it himself, she began to warp it around his neck for him. She tried so hard to avoid touching him, that it became wrapped haphazardly around his face like a mummy. The coffee shop waitress giggled to herself.

Haise wanted to too, but his vision blurred so suddenly. “You’re starting to cry again,” she said in a flat voice, as she started to dab away at his tears with her fingertips without asking, “Do you know why?”  
  
Because he missed somebody, maybe. Or he was just missing something, fundamentally at a person. “I don’t know,” he said, touching his chin as he did so because the scarf scratched him there ever so slighty. “I’m really happy right now, I shouldn’t be crying.”

  
She finished wiping the tears from his face, and because Sasaki had already screwed up this moment enough between them he grew especially bold, in a nothing left to lose sort of way. “I want to repay you for this, so could you come to a christmas party I’m holding.”

She gave him a look like she really did want to, which is why his heart dropped even further when she said, “No.”

  
That night he drowned out his feelings by thinking of the christmas party, but the morning after the questions of why she had said no piled up to him. She probably, already had a boyfriend he said, adjusting his glasses. A stable boyfriend, a peaceful job at a cafe, and he was just a customer trying to impose his selfish fantasies on her. Kaneki had never particularly wanted a relationship before this point, even if he had a childhood friend who became his cornerstone for the world, an author he admired, a person who shared his same book interests, an intellectual equal he could spar with, or even a person whose feelings he changed about slowly as he came to care for her over time, all of those people would have been erased to him. He should be happy, things would be less complicated that way. It was in wanting for things he would eventually lose what he already had, like some main character in a tragic fairy tale needing to be taught a lesson.   
  
Haise decided, he would put an end to it. That keepsake he always kept in his back pocket, he drew it out, with his sewing equipment as well.

Touka was her name. He acquired that through backhanded means, asking her brother. Since he meant to end it, he thought that was okay now, to do a few bad things. Which is why whenever she looked away he would snoop in her direction. Accumulating enough of an idea about who she was, so that, when that day finally came and his students teased him to get a girlfriend, Haise was smug in knowing that he was doing the exact opposite, destroying every chance he would ever have with a girl.   
  
That day he talked to the waitress directly, asking him to meet her outside. When she did, he placed something delicately in her hands. “I’m returning this to you, I’m sorry I kept it so long.”  
  
“What is it?” Touka said, looking at him with one eye underneath the part in her hair.   
  
“My heart!” When he saw the stun in both eyes though, he shook his head, “Nononono! Just kidding, kidding! I wanted to give you the handkerchief you lent me, the first day we met.”

  
“That was just, something we kept in the back-” Touka began but as she looked down, she saw what Haise had done to it, there were stitches. Embroidered into it, were the kanji that spelled her name, surrounded by- a rabbit. Touka looked up at him, “Can I thank you for this?”

Sasaki did not know why she would want that, according to the laws of chivalry he had returned her token of affection, the connection between them should be severed. “Oh-kay,” He said, hesitant, but then closed his eyes.

He smelled.

  
Vanilla, and the aroma of coffee, from up close. Then, felt the lightest of pecks on his lips. Haise’s eyes opened then, to the sight of Touka’s eyes and smile from that close. His heart threatened to skip a beat, which was okay now because at least he could say he died looking at a beautiful sight. Haise’s skin, pale enough to match his gray hair, suddenly flushed a vivid red as months of repressed emotion came to life.

“You’re a funny guy you know that,” Touka said, giggling softly at his sudden shyness.  
  
“Actually, I prefer the term punny.”


End file.
